Emigres

Description

In 1848 revolutions across Europe challenged the social and political status quo. Although they did not succeed, they in part foreshadowed, in part initiated changes that transformed European society and political culture in the following decades. As the uprisings came to an end, revolutionaries of various political convictions and social backgrounds left their home countries, creating the most heterogeneous wave of political exile in the nineteenth century. While the collective and European dimensions of the 1848 revolutions are widely studied, this is rarely done for the political exile that followed. This dissertation takes a prosopographical approach to examine the social and cultural impact of political exile following the 1848 revolutions in a transnational setting. The trajectories of émigrés from the German lands (mainly Baden and Württemberg) and from Hungary in four host societies (Switzerland, England, the United States and the Ottoman Empire) provide the framework for studying exile as a pan-European and global phenomenon. Using correspondences, diaries, memoirs, petitions for clemency, court records and government documents, the dissertation explores case studies of émigrés from various social and educational backgrounds. While exile is often considered an individual challenge, this dissertation studies its collective aspects; in particular, it locates the experience of exile in three realms: family, employment and social networks. Exploring the interconnectedness of these three areas yields insights into the ways in which new realities confronted old patterns of social and political interaction in mid-nineteenth century Europe. The expansion of the social and ideological spectrum of political movements resulted in stricter asylum practices, while host countries maintained the rhetoric of open borders. With newly-gained confidence in political participation, families effectively lobbied for amnesty for their loved ones while appealing to the monarch's "fatherly love," using the language of the pre-revolutionary era. Unwilling labor migrants, émigrés had to adapt skills that had earned them social prestige at home to the realities of the international labor market. Similar tensions characterized émigrés' social networks and their decision to return from exile. Instigators yet also victims of the changes taking place around them, émigrés formed an emblematic group within Europe in the mid-nineteenth century.

Subjects